title: Death… duh!
author: jamie the pirateboy
disclaimer: gundam wing is the property of sotsu and sunrise, yada, yada, yada…
update 1/1/07: millions upon millions of horny fangirls have caused a revolution of private property! nothing is copyrighted anymore, capitalism is extinct! people all over the world suddenly are able to meet their needs without excessive work and free of exploitation and oppression. celebratory art and noise reverbate through the space-time continuum, and in the war-torn world of gundam wing, someone gets an idea…
N.B.: shounen-ai, first fic, dying-ness but not for a good long while (ever?), some OCC. Revised version.
pairings: (almost) 1+2, 3x4x3 (not explicit at all though), past 2+3+2,
c&c: yes please. i'll love you forever an' ever.
A.
Three little pilots, sitting at a table, Heero mused, stepping silently from the shadows. Those three pilots glanced up at his arrival, their expressions markedly without surprise. Heero mused that here were three of the four people in the entire world whom he couldn't sneak up on. It was also markedly quiet in the small, low-lit drawing room, Heero continued to muse. It seemed to be a night for musing.
All of the afore-mentioned musing leading to the conclusion that one pilot, one Duo Maxwell, was conspicuously absent.
Heero dropped unceremoniously into a chair and glanced over each of his companions. Even without the notoriously loquacious one in attendance, it was too quiet. Almost solemn. He snorted softly. Quatre finally looked up from where he had been examining his hands, which rested on the table in front of him, and tried to smile at Heero. It looked painful, Heero reflected, the same way his own attempts usually came out. No one spoke.
"Where's Duo?" He finally gave up and asked, since his fellows were obviously reluctant to answer the question that hung palpably in the air. He had a brief flicker of worry, but dismissed it. They would have told him already if Duo was hurt. Wouldn't they?
Silence. Then Wufei moved his gaze from where it had been fixed on the wall, and turned to look at him.
"We asked him not to come," he paused, "anymore."
Heero refused to lower himself to asking why. He fixed the other man with a soundless glare. Wufei sighed and was about to continue when Quatre spoke.
"Heero, don't be upset. It's for the best. Duo - he… he did something… that, well, it - he… it wasn't…" Quatre struggled, as Heero watched his pale skin redden.
"He acted dishonorably," Wufei interrupted. "He had a contagious disease which he attempted to share, knowingly." The Chinese man finished. Heero noticed that he looked flushed also.
"It was a deadly disease," Trowa added gravely.
I'm being tag-teamed, was Heero's first thought. And then, I must be in shock.
B.
Heero lay back on the bed in his assigned room in the bowels of Quatre's estate. He was exhausted from feigning casual, polite congeniality all evening in the company of his… friends. That was the word Duo used to describe their odd little group.
After further explanation of Duo's absence, they had played a (casual, polite, feigned) game of bridge, made (casual, polite, feigned) toasts to each other's health, and eaten a (casual, polite, feigned) dinner, which he had hardly tasted. The evening had been… strained at best, Heero thought. How could it be so easy when Duo was around, and so hard when he wasn't? Quatre had made valiant attempts to keep conversation going, but with three… reticent? Or just plain anti-social… men and a huge gap left by the talkative joyful, bubbling, affectionate, wonderf -… Heero cut short that thought almost before it even emerged into conscious thought… Duo. It all came back to Duo.
Heero turned onto his side. The information he'd been able to draw out of the other three had been meager. Duo had something called AIDS, which hardly anyone had ever heard of. No one was vaccinated for it anymore because it was so rare. Duo's was the first documented case in over ten years. Weird enough, Heero thought. But that was when the story got stranger still. Supposedly, Duo and Trowa had had something going on during the war. They had not done "anything beyond oral sex" Quatre had said, his face beet red. When Heero had glanced over at Trowa, he seemed entranced with a spot on the tablecloth.
The catch was that Duo had wanted to. (To what, Heero had wondered, then felt his own face flame. It wasn't that he didn't know the mechanics of it, but he found himself curious… which would Duo do? He quickly stopped that train of thought.)
Then came the part of the story that made Heero's stomach twist every time he thought of it. Apparently, when OZ had caught Duo, they had run medical scans and discovered the precursor to the disease that Duo supposedly had now. Someone - probably Milliardo Peacecraft, if Quatre's evasive hints were to be believed - had informed Duo of his condition. According to the anonymous informant's report, Duo had laughed and said something about how disappointed he was that he wouldn't get to be famous for his weird disease, since he was destined for execution in a few days' time. Sounds like Duo, he had to admit.
But then Heero had showed up and instead of killing Duo like he was supposed to, he had rescued him and brought him back… to Trowa. Who had hooked up with Quatre.
Well, that part hadn't been in Quatre's report, but Heero remembered clearly that their relationship had begun around that time. Yet Duo, according to this account, had tried to renew whatever he and Trowa had had. Including "consummating… it," Quatre had explained, his face burning. Without informing Trowa of the risks involved. Trowa had refused.
Heero rubbed at his temples. Who to believe? He had a hard time taking Quatre's tale at face value; he didn't think that Duo would have… could have… done something like that. And Duo didn't lie. But then, not telling the truth wasn't the same as lying… Heero had learned that lesson from Shinigami himself. Could Duo have come back to find his lover with someone else and tried to exact revenge in the only way he could? Had Duo truly known that he had the disease? Could he have been rendered temporarily insane from his imprisonment? From grief?
Heero shook his head. The others didn't even seem interested in knowing the answers to these questions. The month previous Duo had told the others about the disease. A bare week later, someone had revealed this other information to them. Wufei was immediately and understandably furious at what he saw as Duo's disgraceful conduct; Quatre, Heero suspected, was upset partially because he hadn't known about the fling in the first place. Trowa was harder to read. He was obviously upset, Heero thought, but he also seemed somewhat uncertain.
Heero was shocked when he asked if they had talked to Duo about it, to hear that they hadn't had any contact with him since they had talked to the informant. They had discussed the situation and decided (without me, Heero noticed with a slight prickle) that it would be better not to even let Duo try to argue his way out of it with his half-truths and easy smiles. All of them knew that "Duo could talk the legs off a donkey, lead it to water, and convince it to drink," as Wufei had observed. Wufei had been the one assigned to leave Duo the voice mail message asking him not to come.
Heero tried to force from his mind the indelible picture that his imagination was painting: of Duo listening, all alone, to Wufei's cold, furious voice telling him he wasn't welcome among his friends.
Heero rolled back onto his back and looked up at the canopy covering the bed. He took a deep breath, and as he released it, he realized with a start that he was also furious. Just not at Duo.
C.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-ing hell! I can't get this thing in here right! Ack, Heero buddy, would ya help me a sec?" Duo shouted down to him from his gundam.
"What's wrong?" he shouted back.
"Stupid amplifier rod is stuck in the port but I can't let go of the steering deck or I'll have to do the wiring all over again." Duo explained as Heero caught the line and climbed into Duo's gundam.
"Baka," Heero replied absent-mindedly, looking over the situation. He moved in beside Duo and held onto the deck, while Duo jimmied the rod from where it was caught, grunting and cursing with great eloquence. Finally, it was all in place and Duo turned to him and grinned, before giving Heero a small peck on his lips.
Heero found himself smiling back, and then turned and walked out the door. Behind him he heard Duo shouting, "Oi, Heero, just cause I kissed ya don't mean you can fly!"
Instead of landing on the floor, though, he was suddenly in Trowa's arms and Quatre was standing next to him, looking at him sadly.
"You really shouldn't have done that Heero. You've broken your spine and you'll never be able to walk again. I'm sorry Heero."
Then Wufei appeared on his other side. "Heero, you know this means you won't be able to see us anymore, right? It wouldn't work out. It would be a dishonor to all of us…"
"Besides, Heero," Relena interjected, peering over Wufei's shoulder, "You're useless to the cause now. We're going to have to eliminate you." She smiled sweetly at him.
Just then, he realized that Quatre was holding a gun to his head, still looking at him sadly but determinedly, the look he had given all the OZ soldiers who had refused his offer of mercy in return for their surrender.
"Goodbye Heero." Quatre said.
Then he heard the sound of a shot, and felt himself falling, even as he thought to himself, if you hear the sound you're not dead…
D.
Heero woke up with a start, covered in sweat and suddenly cold. He felt first for his gun under his pillow, what was that phrase about old habits? Then he felt around for the blankets and found them on the floor. He allowed himself to shiver as he pulled them up and huddled under them. He checked the clock; it was still early, not yet 4 am. Wufei would probably be up in an hour doing his katas, but Heero would have preferred to be asleep for a good while longer. He didn't want to go back to bed now though.
He had dreamed something; of what, he could only remember faint, disjointed parts. Duo… and Deathscythe, as if the war was still on, and… Relena? He thought he remembered Quatre too, but it was fuzzy, mostly he just remembered the feel, the scent of the dream, and the helpless feeling he had so often when he dreamed, of being unable to control what was happening to him or even his own actions.
Somehow, there was a vague dread wrapped up in all of it that made him want to resist sleep, hoping to avoid going back to that particular dreamworld. Even now, he felt traces of the dream around him. He had only started having dreams this year and rarely then. It was even rarer for him to remember them. He was fairly sure that they weren't what most people would call "good dreams" though - either memories of the war replaying in his mind or sequences of people he didn't know talking to him where he couldn't understand what they were saying. The nights when he dreamed, he often woke up feeling like he hadn't had any sleep at all.
Curling his legs up away from the cold end of the bed, Heero thought about what he would do now. Stay here at Quatre's for the next three days as planned or leave? Confront the other guys or lay low and try to find out more? Call up Duo or wait until he got home?
Call Duo. That brought up a wealth of guilt and confusion. It had been a two months since he had last seen the other pilot. (Former pilot, he reminded himself, not for the first time. He thought that he would probably always think of them all as "the pilots." It was hard to stop when the media wouldn't let go of the phrase.) Duo worked in salvage now, on Howard's ship. Heero had been trying to get himself to call Duo for the past month, but he kept putting it off.
The five of them met up once a month; Heero had missed the last one. He had told them that he couldn't get time off work, but that had been a lie: Relena was always gracious about those monthly visits to Quatre's, offering him far more off-time than he ever took. Really, he had felt the need for some time off from the other guys. At first, he was glad he hadn't gone, but as the month wore on, he regretted it as he realized how much he missed them. He had been looking forward to this meeting.
In the meantime, he had decided he should get in touch with Duo - he's my best friend after all. Heero reflected that his reasoning for naming Duo his best friend was probably very different from why the boy called him best friend; in fact, it had a lot to do with Duo's easy designation of him as such. Duo had been the first person who had treated him first as a person, second as the soldier, and the only person who never seemed to be afraid of him.
But then, despite the desire, he hadn't called. He imagined conversations on the phone, and somehow the more he thought about it, the more he felt that he would sound "incredibly lame" or one of the countless other ways Duo referred to things that bored him. Heero was boring… Duo had said so enough times. Why would he want to hear from me?
So, he didn't call and everyday the guilt was a little more until he knew there was no way he could call Duo now and he would just have to wait for the next meeting to talk to him.
And now Duo wasn't here.
Heero lay in the dark, and felt miserable. His head was in a jumble.
I'm such an idiot… I should have called him.
How dare they not ask me about this decision!
Where is Duo right now? Why didn't he tell me? Does he hate me?
What am I going to do? Will Quatre be offended if I cut short this visit?
I should get back to work anyway. There is no indication that I am wanted or needed here.
I miss Duo.
So, why haven't you called him yet, you baka?
God, I'm useless now!
Will Quatre be upset if I punch a hole in his wall?
No, don't do that, it's not just plaster here like in your shitty apartment, no need to fuck your hand up too…
What the hell is up with Trowa anyway?
I wonder what Quatre's got planned for us tomorrow? It's so hard without Duo here.
Who told them that stuff anyway? Was it Milliardo?
Does Relena know about this?
How could I not have known that Trowa and Duo were together -
Wait, that means Duo is gay! I have three gay friends…
Hey, stop being so uptight!
I'm not!
Good!
Great, now I'm talking to myself…
Duo is dying.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could hear Duo's ironic reply. "Duh!"
- - - - owari? - - - -
Author's note: the working title of this little ficlet started life as "death… a fic," with the obvious references. Then it spontaneously turned into "death… duh!" and suddenly late one night my muse kicked in and as I neared the end of a section, she said "Hey kid, look, it's your big chance for a nice, twisted ending before you get lost in that murky land of clichés and sap"… So. Maybe it's the end. Or maybe "death" is just the beginning (Oh man, I kill myself. And we haven't even started talking about orgasms yet...)